2018 Out in the Open Summit Sessions

Bees Have Three Genders: A Look Into the Hivewith Eli - A conversation about bees and their current and prospective keepers. Open to all levels of experience!

Facilitator: Eli co-runs Shapeshifters, the bespoke chest binder store. In their spare time they make their own clothes, keep bees, and play imagination games. They're bad at singing, good at origami, and have high hopes for better times.

Bro Farm: Queering the Landscape of Sustainable Agriculturewith El In unprecedented numbers, queers, femmes, nbs, and trans folk are entering the field of sustainable agriculture, but often our entrance into this liberating and gender affirming work is met with resistance by the dominant cis-male hetero culture. Even in the more progressive realm of sustainable agriculture, toxic masculinity is still pervasive, particularly among for-profit farms. As a result, many of us have difficulty finding apprenticeships and other job opportunities that fully affirm and celebrate our identities. How can we learn, not just to survive in this climate, but to thrive--to use the rapid pace of change in our world to usher in a queer land revolution?

Drawing upon experiences as an organic vegetable farmer (and radical queer), this workshop will be a space for land workers and those interested in the sustainable food movement to share our stories, discuss strategies for resilience, and dream together of a food system that values our bodies and labor for the unique magic that we bring to the field. We have an important role to play in transforming the landscape of sustainable agriculture from patriarchal capitalism to that of a regenerative economy that works for people and planet. Let's begin by deconstructing our own internalized toxic masculinity and how it operates in our workplaces.

*Participants do not need to have formal farming experience to join this discussion.

Facilitator:El Wilson is a non binary trans person making their living as an organic vegetable farmer in southern New Jersey. Before that they spent five years living, working, and gardening in Philadelphia, and before that they were raised on and around farms in rural West Michigan. El holds a degree in creative writing from Kalamazoo College and occasionally finds a spare minute to jot down words on the back of harvest records.

Plants are Medicinewith Naomi - This session offers an opportunity to explore some of the medicinal and edible plants of the area, discuss botany, engage with direct perception, and talk about what it might mean to cultivate queer relationships to land. Bring layers and dress warmly! If the weather is just too dang cold, we have an indoor contingency plan, which includes herb tasting, attunement practices, + general other of medicinal plant witchery.

Facilitator - Naomi is a dirt femme, herbalist, + acrobat currently making home + caring for medicine gardens in southern Vermont. She is the founding witch at Tiny Pony Apothecary and a member of the Big Teeth Performance Collective. Among many other things, she loves big water, sleeping outdoors, handstands, + collaboration.

Art & Expression:

Moving Our Bodies, Moving Our Movements

Join Biz Hallett and Aurelie Richards in exploring queer identity within/through the body. How are our bodies vessels of authentic movements? How are those movement expressions perceived within queer and non-queer communities? In an attempt at answering these questions, we'll have some time to relax and come home to our bodies. We'll move into a simple, accessible, and fun movement exercise. After some movement, we'll circle up and discuss what we discovered. We'll share our insights — our joys and our difficulties — from experiencing our queer and trans bodies in maybe a new way and hopefully toward our authentic selves.

Highlighting two Vermont drag queens’ grassroots approach to arts, activism, and the creation of queer spaces in rural places.These TV darlings have launched their way out of the dive bars and into the streets (and dirt roads) to shine a light on queer and trans identities within primarily “straight” spaces. Come and join Emoji & Nikki for a humorous recap of their adventures through the intersections of art and activism in rural organizing, and brainstorm ways to leverage art to activist levels within your communities. We’ll work together on developing inclusive drag spaces across the state, and discuss the historical impacts of drag building and dividing communities.

Facilitators: Justin grew up in Cambridge, VT on a dairy farm. They attended Lamoille Union High School (’07), and hold a degree in Business Management from Northern Vermont University (’11). In 2012, Justin ran as an independent for Vermont House at the age of 23. They are a published editor (Tasteful Traditions, Red Barn Books, 2014), and hold several positions on other local non-profit or municipal boards, including Lamoille Young Professionals, Cambridge Historical Society, Cambridge Conservation Commission, Cambridge Economic Development Advisory Committee, and Cambridge Arts Council. In 2016, they helped write the grant known as The Silo Project, which transformed two abandoned concrete silos into the largest outdoor public art installment in the state of Vermont. Justin joined the Outright Vermont board in September 2017, the same month that they opened their own marketing communications firm, called Typha Marketing. They spend their free time performing across Vermont as Emoji Nightmare. As Emoji, they have hosted a show on VCAM called “The T” and a pop radio show on WBTV-LP called “Emoji Pop.”

Taylor Small is Director of Health and Wellness at the Pride Center of Vermont. She graduated from the University of Vermont in 2016 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Human Development & Family Studies, with a minor in Gender Identity and Sexuality Studies. Taylor is a fierce activist by day, and at night she becomes the wildly entertaining Nikki Champagne. Nikki can be found all around town co-hosting LGBTQ+ events including First Friday, Drag Queen Story Hour, Queen City Drag Cabaret, and New Queers Eve!

Conflict Transformation: Turning the Compostwith Kegan

This session will be a container for folks to share what approaches they have used to work with community conflicts. Come and share successes, obstacles and resources. All perspectives and experience levels welcome.Kegan has engaged in the work of conflict transformation within community for over 10 years and would like to share Heart Dialogs: A conflict transformation technology that creates a container for community to share, be heard, be witnessed and take collective action. Heart Dialogs were created by a group of Radical Faeries as part of a Trauma Informed Conflict Resolution workshop in 2015; it blends Heart Circles, Reflective Listening and Restorative Circles.

Facilitator - Kegan Refalo AKA Scobes, is a trans-disciplinary maker, knee deep in the work of building community: from tending fire to home repairs; from vibes checks to costume construction; from dialogs across “the divide” to conflict transformation. They are focused on the work of transforming the toxic into nourishment through decomposition, recomposition and digestion.

adrienne maree brown’s book, Emergent Strategy, is “radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live.” Since its publication last year, it has been hugely influential in movement-building and serves as a powerful guide to navigating change in such turbulent times. We’ll look at how emergent strategy can be applied to our own lives, both in our organizing work and in our personal relationships. We’ll explore the elements of emergent strategy, radically re-imagine what our movements could be if we applied these elements, and maybe even cast some spells. Join us!

Facilitators: Sonia Silbert is an activist and trainer living in Brattleboro. Abby Mnookin is an organizer, educator, writer, parent, and doula living in Brattleboro. Brittany Dunn is an artist, educator, and activist living in Burlington.

Queer Struggles are Mad Struggles: The Fight for Cognitive Libertywith Calvin & Kaz- Cognitive Liberty is the right to mental self-determination. This fundamental human right encompasses, or is a component of, many social justice movements and frameworks including mad pride, neurodiversity, the psychiatric survivor/ex-patient movement, LGBTQIA+ liberation, prison abolition, body positivity and fat acceptance, and the right to drug use. Cognitive liberty is not currently recognized as a human right by any international human rights treaty.​

Historically, portions of the LGBT community have fought for the removal of homosexuality, transgender identity, etc. from the DSM, the manual clinicians use to diagnose mental disorders. However, each time we distance ourselves as queer people from those who are deemed mad, we reinforce the legitimacy of sanist oppression. We are all marginalized by sanism, a form of oppression of people who are perceived to have mental differences.

In a presentation and group discussion format, we will explore the intersections of trans and mad identities, our interwoven histories, and our common cause. Participants will learn about and then discuss how the medicalization and pathologization of mental and behavioral differences (which include gender and sexuality) further oppress and marginalize already oppressed and marginalized people. Folks will walk away with a greater understanding of how cognitive liberty unites various struggles for justice and be empowered to work toward our shared liberation.

Facilitators:

Calvin Moen is the director of training for Vermont Psychiatric Survivors, an independent, statewide mutual support and civil rights advocacy organization run by and for psychiatric survivors. He is a trainer/educator on topics including alternatives to policing and harm reduction approaches to psychiatric drugs. His personal essay on the intersections of queer and mad identities is forthcoming in the anthology Headcase.

Kaz DeWolfe is the communications coordinator for Vermont Psychiatric Survivors. They’re a transmasc, genderqueer, mad, neurodivergent, frazzled parent just doing their best. Kaz is a co-editor of Radical Abolitionist, A Cognitive Liberty Blogspace.​

Who we are & Why we gather: Crafting a Rural Queer Femifestowith Vanessa

​Why do we gather together at Out in the Open? Why do rural LGBTQ livelihoods matter in our movements for justice and liberation? What is our role in these struggles? Why do we need spaces where we can build with each other? What skills and knowledge do we all need to develop as rural queer people at this time to carry out our work and livelihoods?Over the course of the weekend, we will be asking summit participants to reflect and share on these questions. On Sunday, we invite all those interested to come together for community, conversation, and crafting, as we weave together the threads of these thoughts into a zine that tells the story of who we are and why we gather.

Facilitator: Vanessa (they/them) is one of the summit organizers for 2018. I am a landless queer farmer, environmental educator, and nerdy academic choosing a rural life. I'm excited about community healing, opening access to land and resources, and creating thriving local cultures and economies based on human and ecological resilience.

​​Intimacy, Relationships, & Self-Care (18+):

Building Intentional Kink Dynamics with YanaThis session will engage participants in learning, thinking, and sharing about the ways in which our kink dynamics and kinky parts of ourselves invite us to intentionally create reparative relationships with ourselves and our partners.Topics in this session may include developing our kink dynamics in fulfilling directions, self-reflection about our kinky selves, building up active consent in our kink dynamics, and smaller and larger group discussions and resource-sharing.

Facilitator - Yana Tallon-Hicks (she/her) is a queer & kinky human as well as a professional sex & consent educator and relationships therapist who works primarily with the kinky, queer, and non-monogamous communities.

Ropes, RACK, and Risk with Wyatt​We will be looking at how to better our informed consent practices with risky kink play using the "Risk Aware Consensual Kink" model. using Rope and examples from the group, we will pool resources and information to help create scenes that are physically and emotionally safer for everyone.

What happens in our body when we get overwhelmed and how to help it regulate

The neurobiology and physiology of trauma, including Fight, Flight, and Freeze responses (and how they keep us safe and sometimes keep us stuck)

What “recovery” or “healing” or “resilience” might be for each of us and our communities

Sharing tools and skills around what helps each of us when we get triggered as well as how to help others around us.

These are trying times we're living in and while this isn’t a place to process our traumas, we will hold tenderness and sensitivity around content and our embodied experiences. Self care necessary during our time together.

Facilitator: Lis (she/her) is a white, queer, community organizer, and body-based trauma therapist of 20 years, living and working in Brattleboro. Her work, which primarily serves women and queer sexual assault and childhood trauma survivors, centers healing and recovery through an anti-oppression framework. Lis uses body-based tools and touch-based work, predominantly Somatic Experiencing (SE). She is a co-founder of the SE Working Group for Racial Justice (nationally), assistant teaches SE nationally, and is a core member of Lost River Racial Justice (locally).

Bro Farm: Queering the Landscape of Sustainable Agriculturewith El In unprecedented numbers, queers, femmes, nbs, and trans folk are entering the field of sustainable agriculture, but often our entrance into this liberating and gender affirming work is met with resistance by the dominant cis-male hetero culture. Even in the more progressive realm of sustainable agriculture, toxic masculinity is still pervasive, particularly among for-profit farms. As a result, many of us have difficulty finding apprenticeships and other job opportunities that fully affirm and celebrate our identities. How can we learn, not just to survive in this climate, but to thrive--to use the rapid pace of change in our world to usher in a queer land revolution?

Drawing upon experiences as an organic vegetable farmer (and radical queer), this workshop will be a space for land workers and those interested in the sustainable food movement to share our stories, discuss strategies for resilience, and dream together of a food system that values our bodies and labor for the unique magic that we bring to the field. We have an important role to play in transforming the landscape of sustainable agriculture from patriarchal capitalism to that of a regenerative economy that works for people and planet. Let's begin by deconstructing our own internalized toxic masculinity and how it operates in our workplaces.

*Participants do not need to have formal farming experience to join this discussion.

Facilitator:El Wilson is a non binary trans person making their living as an organic vegetable farmer in southern New Jersey. Before that they spent five years living, working, and gardening in Philadelphia, and before that they were raised on and around farms in rural West Michigan. El holds a degree in creative writing from Kalamazoo College and occasionally finds a spare minute to jot down words on the back of harvest records.

​​Moving Our Bodies, Moving Our Movements​Join Biz Hallett and Aurelie Richards in exploring queer identity within/through the body. How are our bodies vessels of authentic movements? How are those movement expressions perceived within queer and non-queer communities? In an attempt at answering these questions, we'll have some time to relax and come home to our bodies. We'll move into a simple, accessible, and fun movement exercise. After some movement, we'll circle up and discuss what we discovered. We'll share our insights — our joys and our difficulties — from experiencing our queer and trans bodies in maybe a new way and hopefully toward our authentic selves.

Emergent Strategy for Collective Liberationwith Abby, Sonia, and Brittany​adrienne maree brown’s book, Emergent Strategy, is “radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live.” Since its publication last year, it has been hugely influential in movement-building and serves as a powerful guide to navigating change in such turbulent times. We’ll look at how emergent strategy can be applied to our own lives, both in our organizing work and in our personal relationships. We’ll explore the elements of emergent strategy, radically re-imagine what our movements could be if we applied these elements, and maybe even cast some spells. Join us!

Facilitators: Sonia Silbert is an activist and trainer living in Brattleboro. Abby Mnookin is an organizer, educator, writer, parent, and doula living in Brattleboro. Brittany Dunn is an artist, educator, and activist living in Burlington.

Building Intentional Kink Dynamics with Yana (18+ only)This session will engage participants in learning, thinking, and sharing about the ways in which our kink dynamics and kinky parts of ourselves invite us to intentionally create reparative relationships with ourselves and our partners.Topics in this session may include developing our kink dynamics in fulfilling directions, self-reflection about our kinky selves, building up active consent in our kink dynamics, and smaller and larger group discussions and resource-sharing.

Facilitator: Yana Tallon-Hicks (she/her) is a queer & kinky human as well as a professional sex & consent educator and relationships therapist who works primarily with the kinky, queer, and non-monogamous communities.

SAT. Session 2 - 2:00PM-4:00PM

Bees Have Three Genders: A Look Into the Hivewith Eli - A conversation about bees and their current and prospective keepers. Open to all levels of experience!

Facilitator: Eli co-runs Shapeshifters, the bespoke chest binder store. In their spare time they make their own clothes, keep bees, and play imagination games. They're bad at singing, good at origami, and have high hopes for better times.​

Conflict Transformation: Turning the Compost with Kegan

This session will be a container for folks to share what approaches they have used to work with community conflicts. Come and share successes, obstacles and resources. All perspectives and experience levels welcome.Kegan has engaged in the work of conflict transformation within community for over 10 years and would like to share Heart Dialogs: A conflict transformation technology that creates a container for community to share, be heard, be witnessed and take collective action. Heart Dialogs were created by a group of Radical Faeries as part of a Trauma Informed Conflict Resolution workshop in 2015; it blends Heart Circles, Reflective Listening and Restorative Circles.

Facilitator - Kegan Refalo AKA Scobes, is a trans-disciplinary maker, knee deep in the work of building community: from tending fire to home repairs; from vibes checks to costume construction; from dialogs across “the divide” to conflict transformation. They are focused on the work of transforming the toxic into nourishment through decomposition, recomposition and digestion.

Queer Struggles are Mad Struggles: The Fight for Cognitive Libertywith Calvin & Kaz- Cognitive Liberty is the right to mental self-determination. This fundamental human right encompasses, or is a component of, many social justice movements and frameworks including mad pride, neurodiversity, the psychiatric survivor/ex-patient movement, LGBTQIA+ liberation, prison abolition, body positivity and fat acceptance, and the right to drug use. Cognitive liberty is not currently recognized as a human right by any international human rights treaty.​

Historically, portions of the LGBT community have fought for the removal of homosexuality, transgender identity, etc. from the DSM, the manual clinicians use to diagnose mental disorders. However, each time we distance ourselves as queer people from those who are deemed mad, we reinforce the legitimacy of sanist oppression. We are all marginalized by sanism, a form of oppression of people who are perceived to have mental differences.

In a presentation and group discussion format, we will explore the intersections of trans and mad identities, our interwoven histories, and our common cause. Participants will learn about and then discuss how the medicalization and pathologization of mental and behavioral differences (which include gender and sexuality) further oppress and marginalize already oppressed and marginalized people. Folks will walk away with a greater understanding of how cognitive liberty unites various struggles for justice and be empowered to work toward our shared liberation.

Facilitators:

Calvin Moen is the director of training for Vermont Psychiatric Survivors, an independent, statewide mutual support and civil rights advocacy organization run by and for psychiatric survivors. He is a trainer/educator on topics including alternatives to policing and harm reduction approaches to psychiatric drugs. His personal essay on the intersections of queer and mad identities is forthcoming in the anthology Headcase.

Kaz DeWolfe is the communications coordinator for Vermont Psychiatric Survivors. They’re a transmasc, genderqueer, mad, neurodivergent, frazzled parent just doing their best. Kaz is a co-editor of Radical Abolitionist, A Cognitive Liberty Blogspace.​

Ropes, RACK, and Risk with Wyatt (18+ only)​We will be looking at how to better our informed consent practices with risky kink play using the "Risk Aware Consensual Kink" model. using Rope and examples from the group, we will pool resources and information to help create scenes that are physically and emotionally safer for everyone.

SUN. Session 1 - 9:00AM-11:00AM

​Plants are Medicinewith Naomi - This session offers an opportunity to explore some of the medicinal and edible plants of the area, discuss botany, engage with direct perception, and talk about what it might mean to cultivate queer relationships to land. Bring layers and dress warmly! If the weather is just too dang cold, we have an indoor contingency plan, which includes herb tasting, attunement practices, + general other of medicinal plant witchery.

Facilitator - Naomi is a dirt femme, herbalist, + acrobat currently making home + caring for medicine gardens in southern Vermont. She is the founding witch at Tiny Pony Apothecary and a member of the Big Teeth Performance Collective. Among many other things, she loves big water, sleeping outdoors, handstands, + collaboration.

Highlighting two Vermont drag queens’ grassroots approach to arts, activism, and the creation of queer spaces in rural places.These TV darlings have launched their way out of the dive bars and into the streets (and dirt roads) to shine a light on queer and trans identities within primarily “straight” spaces. Come and join Emoji & Nikki for a humorous recap of their adventures through the intersections of art and activism in rural organizing, and brainstorm ways to leverage art to activist levels within your communities. We’ll work together on developing inclusive drag spaces across the state, and discuss the historical impacts of drag building and dividing communities.

Facilitators: Justin grew up in Cambridge, VT on a dairy farm. They attended Lamoille Union High School (’07), and hold a degree in Business Management from Northern Vermont University (’11). In 2012, Justin ran as an independent for Vermont House at the age of 23. They are a published editor (Tasteful Traditions, Red Barn Books, 2014), and hold several positions on other local non-profit or municipal boards, including Lamoille Young Professionals, Cambridge Historical Society, Cambridge Conservation Commission, Cambridge Economic Development Advisory Committee, and Cambridge Arts Council. In 2016, they helped write the grant known as The Silo Project, which transformed two abandoned concrete silos into the largest outdoor public art installment in the state of Vermont. Justin joined the Outright Vermont board in September 2017, the same month that they opened their own marketing communications firm, called Typha Marketing. They spend their free time performing across Vermont as Emoji Nightmare. As Emoji, they have hosted a show on VCAM called “The T” and a pop radio show on WBTV-LP called “Emoji Pop.”

Taylor Small is Director of Health and Wellness at the Pride Center of Vermont. She graduated from the University of Vermont in 2016 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Human Development & Family Studies, with a minor in Gender Identity and Sexuality Studies. Taylor is a fierce activist by day, and at night she becomes the wildly entertaining Nikki Champagne. Nikki can be found all around town co-hosting LGBTQ+ events including First Friday, Drag Queen Story Hour, Queen City Drag Cabaret, and New Queers Eve!

Who we are & Why we gather: Crafting a Rural Queer Femifestowith Vanessa​Why do we gather together at Out in the Open? Why do rural LGBTQ livelihoods matter in our movements for justice and liberation? What is our role in these struggles? Why do we need spaces where we can build with each other? What skills and knowledge do we all need to develop as rural queer people at this time to carry out our work and livelihoods?Over the course of the weekend, we will be asking summit participants to reflect and share on these questions. On Sunday, we invite all those interested to come together for community, conversation, and crafting, as we weave together the threads of these thoughts into a zine that tells the story of who we are and why we gather.

Facilitator: Vanessa (they/them) is one of the summit organizers for 2018. I am a landless queer farmer, environmental educator, and nerdy academic choosing a rural life. I'm excited about community healing, opening access to land and resources, and creating thriving local cultures and economies based on human and ecological resilience.

What happens in our body when we get overwhelmed and how to help it regulate

The neurobiology and physiology of trauma, including Fight, Flight, and Freeze responses (and how they keep us safe and sometimes keep us stuck)

What “recovery” or “healing” or “resilience” might be for each of us and our communities

Sharing tools and skills around what helps each of us when we get triggered as well as how to help others around us.

These are trying times were living in and while this isn’t a place to process our traumas, we will hold tenderness and sensitivity around content and our embodied experiences. Self care necessary during our time together.

Facilitator: Lis (she/her) is a white, queer, community organizer, and body-based trauma therapist of 20 years, living and working in Brattleboro. Her work, which primarily serves women and queer sexual assault and childhood trauma survivors, centers healing and recovery through an anti-oppression framework. Lis uses body-based tools and touch-based work, predominantly Somatic Experiencing (SE). She is a co-founder of the SE Working Group for Racial Justice (nationally), assistant teaches SE nationally, and is a core member of Lost River Racial Justice (locally).